Mother of Strangerville
by Inochikage
Summary: You're a rather new resident of strangerville and don't really understand your job. You're in the military, but why have you do mundane tasks in a place that nothing interesting will ever happen in? Being beckoned by the mother aside, you mean.
1. Chapter 1

You stand with fatigue clouding your understanding of the world just outside the door of your home. You have coffee in your hand and goop in your eyes as you look out to the lit road beyond your massive, empty yard of sand. There's a shadow there that wasn't there before.

Some sort of plant bud. No trunk or tree, just a giant flower bud the size of your forearm, maybe. It's hard to tell from this distance.

Not gonna ruin your day.

You head past your comically small fenced-in afroturf yard to go inside the door to your home. The town you've recently moved to is a weird one, and like one of your neighbors, the above ground portion is empty. Instead, the door leads to a small, undecorated entryway with stairs leading down to the actual house underground. You know the town's tendency to hide structures deep in the earth should be concerning, but you kind of like it. The deafening silence, the cool temperatures, the fact you straight up will never hear a knock at the door…  
You take your nightly shower, get dressed in your comfy pajamas, and retire for the night.  
What was that thing in your yard? You try to think of other things like how mundane work is going to be tomorrow. Being in the military always meant filling your day with meaningless tasks, but Strangerville's military base took things to the next level. Whether it was painting rocks and rearranging them in the desert or marching lonesome through the land, the massive standing army in Strangerville was kept busy any way possible. Why did they even have such a big military presence? No one was going to invade a remote desert. You suppose you can't complain. You didn't much like life in San Myshuno. Too many people. Too far above ground.

You sit up and pre-dread whatever your boss is going to call you and tell you to do tomorrow. That's the weird thing. You rarely even see the base. You're usually called and told to complete a task, and your boss transfers the funds once you've completed it.

You hear your cellphone ring.

Oh, right, it was already morning. You were trying to get up for the day. Hence the coffee. Well, now you're utterly unprepared for work. You answer.

"Hello?"

"March for five hours today," your boss says before hanging up.

Well, he didn't specify which five hours, so you're tempted to sleep, but you know the day will only get hotter. Best to start now so you'll be done around ten in the morning.

You don't even bother showering and simply get dressed in practical light gear. You hook a water bottle to your belt and head back up to the world above.

It's still dark, but the roads are always lit, so you head there.

There are two buds, now. You don't know anything about plants, so you ignore them. You march right on past with only a hint of curiosity for the purple thing.

As you pass around the bar, you look out and see more buds. They certainly weren't there before, but now they're everywhere. In yards. Out so far you can barely see them. You want to inspect, but you have to march, so you keep going. You've heard of flowers that pop up in deserts and bloom for only a day, and you wonder if today's that day. Seems like you would have heard something.

As the night turned to morning, more people start coming out. Some are going outside to inspect the weird plants, and some walk on past like it's business as usual. You see other military personnel completing their meaningless tasks. Some are practice-fighting. A couple are marching. One poor sap is stood at attention just outside the bar for seemingly no reason.

As the sun comes up over the canyon walls, you finish marching. You badly need a shower, so you head home.

Once you're clean, you don't dress right away. Despite the cold water and underground room, you're just too warm to get dressed until your called for the next task of the day. You walk over to the sink and begin to clean it just to do something.

You can't help but stare at yourself in the little bathroom mirror. Who can? As you clean, you lock eyes with yourself and stare deeply. You wonder if you should grow a beard. You know you're already passing. You haven't been ma'am'd once since moving to Strangerville, but you're always paranoid that you're not passing enough. Not that it's important. You know you shouldn't obsess over meaningless things, but it still bothered you. You were lucky in that you naturally looked masculine from your height to your boobs that passed as just a result of being chubby.

You decide to check out the buds in the yard now that you have time. You get dressed in civilian clothes and head up the stairs to the entry way when you hear knocking.

Ah, damn it.

You consider just going back downstairs and pretending you didn't hear, but you decide to just deal with it. You open the door.

It's Jess. A coworker of yours. She's always enthusiastic and trying to talk to you, but something's different.

Something's weird.

Her eyes are wide open and her grin is so taught it looks like it might rip her skin. When she lifts her arm to wave, it seems she forgets to keep her back straight, so she drops to the side as she continues a mechanical movement to wave. You've seen her play with kids by pretending to be a robot, and you write it off as that she's doing it to you for some reason until you hear her try to speak. Like she's learning to use vocal chords for the first time.

She makes a forced exhale noise as her mouth vaguely forms the word "Hello."

"Are you okay?" you ask. You wave your hand in front of her, but her eyes are dead set on yours. She is entirely unmoved. "Mrs. Sigworth, please stop."

"Q. Quwelcome…" Jess choked out, "to… strangeville."

"Oh. Okay. That's nice. Do you need water?"

"Mother. Dressed in red. She is beauty."

"Do you want me to play aliens with Christie?" you ask. Jess has always been playful and a bit of a method actor when it came to making games with her kid.

"She sees through our fleshy eyes."

"Yeah, okay, Jess, I'm going to pass for now. I've, uh…" luckily for you, your phone rings so you don't have to reject being involved in Jess's life. You pick up.  
It's your boss again. "Water all the plants in the space behind the trailer park." He hangs up.

Yeah, that was expected. You thought the marching was too easy. You wave goodbye to Jess and go back down to get dressed in your military gear. You hook a water bottle to your belt again and bring a bucket of water that you have to haul up the stairs and around the fence behind your home. Luckily, Jess is gone. She knows you can't turn down an order.

With the sun now high, you can see forever in the sandy expanse. You're a little relieved to be away from the roads and people, but you can't shake the feeling that something is different in the air. You continue your business. You fill your watering can and sprinkle just a touch of water on every weed, succulent, and bush you can see. Your boss didn't specify how far into the desert he wanted you to water, but you figure you'll get a call when you're done.

For hours, you're out there. The plants don't even need watering. It's a desert.  
You go to the bucket to refill your watering can, but you find that it has somehow spilled. The sand is still drying, and you're upset at the fact you'll need to refill and haul the thing again.

In the wet spot, you see a purple sprout peak up over the dirt. It blooms to reveal a smaller bud inside, and you recognize it as a smaller version of the ones in your lawn. You've never seen a plant pop up so rapidly. The desert was weird.

Your phone rings again. Your boss, of course. No one else calls you. "Research programming."

You kind of want to watch the plant grow as it seems to be doing, but you know you can't turn down an order, so you head back home and work on programing.

When you get on your computer, you realize it's five in the afternoon. You've been doing meaningless junk for twelve hours. At least you'll get paid well. You work on your government programming class.

At nine, you are finally relieved of your daily tasks.

Finally. You can go check out the bud in your yard. You go up and out into the already dark night and approach a bud near the street. It hasn't gotten bigger, but secondary pedals with what look like little teeth have grown around the bud. To protect it from birds, you figure.

Considering how rapidly they seem to be popping up, you figure you won't do any environmental harm by opening one to see inside. You poke your thumbs into the top of the bud and feel that the lining of the bud is almost thicker than your thumbs are long, but with some force, you can separate the pedals just a touch. Not enough to see inside, but you can stick your hand in and push hard enough to reach inside. You don't know much about plants, but you don't suppose flower buds are supposed to be filled with a harsh-feeling goop.

You hear something. No, that's not quite right. You feel something.

Ḩ₮Ḙ Ṏ₸ῈḦṜ₼ ℈Ṅ€₴Ḏ ₦ЯΪʘ

It's a message, you know, but you don't understand it. You can feel it. You can feel what must be the tongue of a god being inscribed into the veins of your submerged hands. Your blood flows by it and is pulled back into your heart to be spread to the rest of your body. Not against your will but not to your order, your hand reaches further into the bud. The message gets clearer, but you still can't understand. Your elbow enters the top of the bub and your hand touches the bottom, but you soon find what must be tubing or a strange, hallow root from which the message is being called. The root is narrow but smooth, and you can barely fit your hand in, but you do.

Your arm sinks so low that your tee sleeve is pushed up to your shoulder as you are compelled to understand, and only then are you close enough to the source to get something clear enough to decipher.

₮ḨḘ ₼Ṏ₸ḦῈṜ Ṅ℈€Ḏ₴ ΪЯʘ₦

The plant needs more iron than what is in the soil. You don't know why you know that. You don't know anything about plants. But you do know it. You pull your hand out needing a good amount of slow force as though you were pulling your hand out of a cornstarch solution, and when you do, none of the goop you can swear you felt remains on your hand or arm. Your skin is a little irritated as if to signal you had, indeed, been submerged in goop, but you're not wet at all.

You fetch an old cast iron pan you don't use anymore. You don't know. You're just paranoid about using a pan you can't use soap to clean. You don't need nearly as much pressure to put your gift-wielding hand into the bud.

The pan dissolves almost instantly in the goop, and it goes from feeling harsh against your skin to soft and silky. You don't know how the goop is harsh enough to dissolve pan without dissolving you, but it was. This time, it's like yanking your hand out of water, and a purple substance with an ever so slight glow remains on you.

You have an insane urge to taste it, but logic says you shouldn't lick strange glowing juice. You can't bury the thought in your brain, but you can keep enough control over the instinct to walk into your home, go to your bathroom, and put soap on your arm to mix it until the knowledge that it now tastes like soap overrides the want to know what the substance tastes like. You rinse it off and feel your now baby-smooth skin.

That's enough weirdness for the day. You head to bed.

You can't view your own dream. Like it's encoded. But you know it involves the bud.


	2. Chapter 2

You wake overheated and sweaty. Your alarm clock reads as three AM. You could get an extra hour in, but you decide you can't go back to sleep. Besides, you gotta piss. You forgot to do that before going to sleep.

You head to the bathroom still half asleep and sit on the toilet to do your thing. You stand up to flush, and as it does, a long, purple vine rises from the drain. It has razor-looking leaves and is followed by two more vines. They reach out, as if their reaching towards you, but you step back.  
They retreat back down the drain.

What the hell?

Well, you can't say you haven't seen anything weirder in your time on earth. You once saw a man literally inhale a hotdog and cough it out as a projectile.

You wash your hands and watch television as you wait for your boss to call.

You worry about Jess. You think about calling her, but you don't know what to say. "Hey, were you playing around yesterday or is there something seriously wrong with your brain?" Yeah, not likely. You just absent-mindedly watch the television.

Five AM comes. You don't receive a call. Huh. You wait a little longer in case your boss is just late for the first time in his life, but after twenty minutes, you decide maybe you aren't getting a call. You go ahead and get in the shower.

As you soak water into your dense hair, you hear scratching in the drain. You don't pay it mind. Lots of burrowing creatures made noise that echoed through the piping whenever their path became blocked by it.

Something lightly touches your ankle. It begins to twist up and around your leg.

You open your eyes despite being the middle of shampooing and see a purple vine crawling up you from the drain. Panicking, you reach down and try to yank it, but not only is it on tight, but the razor-sharp leaves dig into your palms. The vine's grip only gets tighter, and three more vines sprout from the drain. One wraps around your dominate hand, one wraps around just under your ribcage to trap your other arm against your body, and the last looks different from the others. It has no leaves and is a soft shade of pink. The leafy-vines force you down to your knees in the running water, and the one around your arm holds it out. The pink vine wraps around the wound in your palm and up your forearm. As you struggle, roots sprout from the pink one and root into your skin. You can feel the plant running through your arteries and making your arm turn blue and numb.

You know it won't do anything. You know no one can hear you. You're underground and have no neighbors. But still, you scream. You let out a howl of pain, and as if scared by the noise, the vine quickly retreated.

Your arm has no open wounds despite having definitely been injured, and it quickly returned to its usual shade. If it weren't for the scratches on your leg and body from the leaves, you wouldn't think it was real.

Shaken, you turn off the shower and get out.

You lay down in bed and, despite the heat, wrap yourself as tight as you can in your blankets.

Your phone rings. You pick it up.

It's not your boss. You recognize the voice as Mayor Roswell's, and it's not a personal call. It's pre-recorded. "This is an emergency message to all residents of Strangeville. Ignore the accidental declaration of emergency. There was an accident at the lab, but no toxic material was spilled. Resume business as usual."

What emergency declaration? Your phone rings as soon as that message is over, and you hear your boss's voice in another pre-recorded message. "This is an emergency message to all residents of Strangeville. Do not go outdoors. Do not open windows. An accident at the crater lab has caused an unknown plant to pop up, and the plant is now believed to be highly toxic. Do not interact with the strange blooms around town. Symptoms of toxicity include hallucinations, unexplained lacerations, and periods of time in which you lose voluntary control of your body. If you suspect you or a loved one is affected, keep them hydrated and safe."

You look at your cut-up legs. Shit.

Well, you're already infected. Can't get worse, you don't think, so you decided to tie a scarf around your face and go outside in military gear to make sure no one missed the message.

As soon as you step out, you notice the sky is darker than usual. Not by much. A sort of purple-ish fog blocked out the sun. You notice tiny purple specs landing on your clothes.

The buds from before have gotten taller and become a different shape. You suppose they weren't buds, and the plant just had a strange sapling.

You're not here for the plant. You're here to make sure everyone is safe. You check at the library, at the trailer park, all up and down the plaza. No one is out.

Except one.

The Curio shop stand.

Erwin the Owner was stood there looking around as confused as ever. You approach. "Erwin, we're in a state of emergency."

"Okay, that makes sense," Erwin says. He never takes his phone off silent or checks it. "What's wrong?"

"Something happened at the lab. These weird plants are all very toxic."

"Oh." Erwin looked a little guilty. "So I shouldn't have picked the fruit off of them?"

"They have fruit?"

"Yeah, two of them had these." Eriwn reached below the counter and pulled out a wrinkly orange thing. Fully plump, it was probably the size of a baseball, but in its withered state, it looked to be the size of a golf ball. It had a weak glow to it. "I thought they looked cool, so I picked them."

"Erwin, you can't just mess with random glow-y plants." You're a hypocrite. You stuck your entire damn arm in one and gave it your mini iron skillet.

"Well, at least I didn't eat them. Look how edible they look."

You do feel a strange pull to eat one, but it's resistible. "Yeah, don't do that. I think I got poisoned by these things myself. I've been hallucinating like crazy. Shit growing out of my drains. Vines trying to eat me."

Erwin points firmly at you. "I told you, did I? They're learning mind control at that lab. They bred these weird plants, they make you hallucinate, and then your primed for mind control!"

"You said it was radio waves, Erwin, not plants."

"They use radio waves to control you when you're hallucinating!" he pulled a pasta strainer out with a little antenna at the top and lights glued to it. "You should protect yourself with my patented hat!"

"Erwin. A metal hat won't protect you from radio waves. It'll make it worse."

Erwin looks down at his little invention with a tinge of sadness.

"Just go home, Man."

Erwin puts the hat on himself and begins packing up.

You decide that everyone is inside and that you should report back home to prevent further toxicity. Once safe in your little bunker, you sit on your bed and call Jess. She was probably poisoned, too.

She answers. "Hello?"

"Hey, Jess. Are you okay? You were acting odd yesterday."

"I… I got a little sick from the plants I think. My job was to tear up the buds and," she coughs up a lung, "and it didn't go well."

"Damn. Do you need me to come over?"

"No, no, my husband's got me. You stay at home, alright? This stuff is nasty."

"I think I've already got it. I've been hallucinating like crazy."

"Oh, no. hey, come over and we'll watch you, alright, you do not want to be alone with this stuff. It's scary."

"I'll be fine, Jess. Get well."

"Alright. Take it easy."

"I will. Bye." You hang up and turn on the television, but you don't watch it. It's just to generate noise.

Eventually you have to pee. You don't want to given what happened last time, but you have to, so you do. Luckily, no vines come out this time. When you go to wash your hands, as you're lathering, however, vines slither out of the drain. You step back and let the water run as they seem to be seeking something.

"What do you want?" you whisper.

The vines respond to your voice and began to inch towards you.

You step aside, leave, and close the door behind you. That's enough bathroom for a life time.

Curiosity of the plants and the haunted status of your bathroom motivates you to go outside despite the strange weather. You approach one of the newly tall pods and look about it. You notice sharp leaves similar to the ones on the vines buckled around the bud . Out of curiosity, you touch one of the filaments protruding from the top of the bud.

The sharp leaves and toothed armor opens as the pod warps to spread out its strange pedals. A pollen tube weaves out and twists like a snake until it faces where the filament had been touched, and the top blooms out to reveal a glowing orange fruit the size of a baseball.

You don't think you should take it. It looks like it tastes like a mixture between butterscotch and an orange-flavored hard candy, and you have the same urge to eat the fruit as you do decorative dice. However, you're capable of thought, so you understand that whatever poisoning you've already given yourself would only be worsened if you-

You take the fruit and pocket it.

The pollen tube(?) retracts, the bud closes, and the leaves and armor return to their previous state.

Can it recognize you? No, probably not. It probably opens to anything that touches it. Like a Venus fly trap but in reverse.

You take your fruit down back to the house and go to your kitchen: the place for examining fruit. You put it down and gently press your thumb into the skin until the skin cracks. It peels like a grape, you notice, but it's so big that the soft innards collapses under its own weight. It has a pit of sorts, the seed, you guess, which is the source of the glow. Once extracted from the goo, the glow fades away.

You feel a little sad. You killed it, you monster.

You toss it all. Probably shouldn't eat it. Well, you definitely shouldn't eat it.

Hopefully the plant won't be upset that you wasted its fruit.

What the hell are you thinking about? Plants don't get upset because you throw away their fruit. They don't have brains or Upset Juice or whatever that hormone is called.

Well, at least that was over and you're not going back out there to get another fruit from one of the many other strange blooms around town.

What are you saying? That's exactly what you're doing!

You head back up to the surface, approach a different bud, and you lightly grasp a filament. This time, the bud barely opens at all, and the pollen tube reaches only a fifth of its height before opening a touch to reveal the fruit. You reach into the half-bloom for it, but the pedals clasp against your hand. Far gentler than the message of the goop a while ago, you can feel some message laying gently on your skin. You can't understand it, but you know its tone to be patient and careful. Like a toddler's nanny trying to reason the kid from painting on the walls.

The plant then retreats to its pod to leave the fruit in your hand.

You have no earthly clue what you're supposed to with it. You suppose you should take it to a scientist, but you don't know any. You just pocket it and head back in.

You set it on the arm of your couch as you eat and watch television. After a few hours, you realize the skin on the fruit isn't as tight. You wonder if it needs water.

Since flowers use vases and you think this is some sort of fucked up flower, you put the fruit in a cereal bowl and let it sit overnight so you can retire.

In the morning, you get up, see that the fruit has returned to its original size, and get ready for the day including a shower. No vines, luckily.

You receive a call at five sharp as a pre-recorded message. It's Mayor Roswell. "The pollen in the air has been deemed non-toxic. All residents including scientists and military personnel are to resume normal activities, but are not to interact with any strange plants."

Immediately after, your boss calls. "Uproot strange plants in Strangerville."

You try to object to ripping up extremely toxic plants that made Jess all weird, but he's hung up before you can cuss him out.

You pocket the weird fruit because it's cool and you want it on you and head up to the outside world. You approach one of the two buds by your house and sit next to it.

How are you supposed to uproot this? You can see some minor roots, but you know it has one huge one in the center and God knows how deep that goes. Uprooting these things could be like uprooting a tree.

You use your hands to scoop away dirt near the surface roots and dig down to where you feel the big root that you once stuck your hand in. It doesn't have the roughness of a root, infact, it felt more like a vine.

As you ready yourself to pull, you remember the sad, fading glow of the fruit you dissected earlier. It's a plant. It's crazy to be sad about a plant. It's super toxic and as a protector of the town, you have to get rid of it, damn it.

You straighten your legs best you can and pull up, but between the weight of the fluid-filled plant and the connection of the bigger root, all of your energy barely convinces it to move a centimeter.

When something taps the top of your head, you're so incredibly taken off-guard that you drop what you were trying to do and jump back a couple feet.

The pollen-tube thing that must be more a stem is out and pointed in your direction. After a few seconds, it reaches towards you, snakes into your jacket pocket, and uses its bloom to grasp the fruit. It holds it out to you.

What the hell? Are these things sentient?

You carefully hold your hands out and the plant places the fruit there.

The question remains: what the hell are you supposed to do with this?

This is crazy. You're hallucinating. You're sick and hallucinating. You turn back for the house and dial your boss. "I'm calling in sick," you tell him. "I've been poisoned and it's getting to me bad."

"Damn it, you're all sick! You can't call today off! If you want to protect Strangerville and its civilians from it spreading, you'll get rid of the plants!"

"Wait a minute, all of the military is sick?"

He hangs up. Of course he does. But he has a point.

Returning with a shovel, you stick the head in the hole you dug in the soil. You press the edge of the sharp metal against the main stem and you think very hard about pushing it in.

You're pretty hungry. You should eat something and come back later to the plant.

No. No procrastinating. You close your eyes, breathe in, breathe out, and jab your shovel with all your might into the stem.

The pub defensively goes back to its little size from before as purple spores puff out in a massive cloud. You fall back in sheer surprise and cough and wheeze in the dense fog of plant babies.

Is the plant okay? You look back at the damage you've conflicted. Glowing goop is leaking and clotting at the injury to the stem.

You can feel a voice in your lungs. A voice that isn't yours. One you barely understand. Your heart carries this voice in it and beats it to the rest of your body. It's strange, it's not yours, and as scared as you are, it's warm.

You try to stand back up, but your fine control is fading. You simply pat your hand on the ground and drag your fingers through the sand as you try to put enough force in your shoulders to lift you. The voice stiffens your knuckles and wrist, your toes and ankles. The stiffness spreads up your limbs and your muscles stop responding to you. They respond only to the voice, and the voice is not familiar with them. The voice spreads until you can't control your breathing, even.

But the voice is nourishing.

There is not hunger, no fatigue, only the voice, now.

It stands you up on legs it does not fully understand how to use. It jerks your right foot out, assures its balance, and falls forward until your foot is back on the ground. You feel a little proud.

T

You're so busy with how clear the voice is to you now that you don't grasp for a moment longer that it's upset you attacked it. You try to communicate. You think really hard, "I didn't realize you all were alive."

E. D.

Your hand picks up the shovel and the voice walks you in its dangerously imbalanced gait to your home and down your stairs.

S. E.

Your body wanders into your bathroom and your shovel raises above. The voice strikes down and the shovel clanks so roughly against the concrete under the linoleum that it rattles you a little and hurts.

E.

You wonder why.

U. N.

Aw. Wait, not aw, this thing is controlling you! This thing is taking over the town, the one you're sworn to protect!

O H. S.

D.

The possession leaves you and you nearly drop to the floor in the sudden snap back to control. You steady yourself and breathe heavily as you look around the bathroom. Aside from the tear in the linoleum, nothing at all looks out of the ordinary.

You drop the shovel half-hazardly and crawl into bed. Your phone rings, but you don't pick up. It's not even close to night, but you're just done for the day.

These things are alive. Well, all plants are alive, but this thing is sentient and communicates. Your phone rings again, but you just turn it off.

Fuck this. You need answers. You get up and march your way through the town towards the mayor's house. It's not empty, anymore. In fact, its now full of sick-looking soldiers and the occasional fellow walking as though their legs were not their own. You walk up the steep hillside and approach the home of Mayor Roswell, and you give it a firm knock.

Mayor Roswell answers. Or, at least, the body of Mr. Roswell answers. His smile is too taught against his face, and his body is balanced in the weirdest way possible. "H… Hello," Mayor Roswell can barely say.

"Ah, hell. Look, what the hell is going on, here?"

"Our Mother."

You wave a hand in front of his face. He doesn't respond to it. He keeps looking dead into your eyes.

He lifts his hand, rebalances himself, and plops it on your shoulder. He leans forward, and the dead smile tried to change to a more sincere emotion. "She dreams through our eyes."

"Holy shit," you gasp. "I'm talking to the plant."

Roswell let out a strange noise that sounded like he was trying to agree. "She is free. Don't contain her."

You hear a female's voice call, "Ted!" before Mrs. Roswell came and grabbed her estranged husband to pull him back. She looks up at you with confusion. "Is something wrong?"

"No, Ma'am. I'm only trying to understand what's going on."

"He's sick right now, I'm afraid, but, um." Meredith Roswell stands out on the porch with you and shuts the door behind her. She lowers her voice. "Look, I… I caused all of this. I'm the reason all these toxic plants popped up."

You can see in her eyes that she's lying. She's not a good liar and it's because she's a good woman. "No you didn't."

"I did." You can't deny the guilt in her averted eyes.

"Meredith, what do you know about these plants?"

She looks you in the eyes and tells you what you already know. "I know they can feel pain. And loneliness."

You can feel the toxicity in you spark and rev at the words, but it stays beneath your control.

"Now the whole town is possessed. I should have just trusted Ted." She looks away. "I just couldn't let those scientists keep prodding her."

"Who is 'her'?"

Meredith says something to you, but you can't hear it over the toxicity in you answering.

E

You can hear Meredith again. "… and I could speak to her through him, and she was so upset, I had to do something."

"Ms. Roswell, could I… speak to her for a moment?"

Meredith looks a little conflicted, but she eventually opens the door and lets you in.

Mayor Roswell is still stood there. He has an inhuman smile and impossibly wide eyes.

"You're the mother?" you ask.

"She sees through our eyes," he responds.

"What am I supposed to do with the fruit?"

It seems difficult for the mother to speak through Mayor Roswell, but she eventually chokes out, "Our roots… beneath pipes. We want to… grow near you… but can't get through."

You nod. You know what you need to do.


	3. Chapter 3

This is dumb. This is dumb as hell.

You stand in your bathroom holding your shovel as you stare down at the tile beneath you.

First off, under the tile was solid concrete. How can you ever hope to break it with a meager shovel?

Second, YOU'RE DOING THIS BECAUSE A PLANT MONSTER TOLD YOU TO.

P

You hate that you're calmed by the voice in your veins talking to you.

T

You gently position the end of the shovel between two tiles.

I S E E. T.

You feel encouragement. From your blood, from the toxicity that runs through it. You lift your shovel, anticipate pain, and crack it down upon it. You miss hitting the space between like you meant, but the tile shatters anyway, and you can feel the impact dig through your arms and ping your shoulders.

The pain from your shoulders numb your arms and you drop the shovel.

After kicking some tile bits away, you can see the concrete below. It was several feet thick, you were sure. How are you to break that?

Nonetheless, your dumb ambition gets the best of you. You pick up your shovel and crack it down on the exposed concrete and-

It moves. A lot.

Confused, you get down on your knees and put a hand on the concrete. You can move it a little, like it's a loose piece. After shoving it to the side, you see the end of it, and you grab it and rip it up from the broken tile.

Then, you laugh. You laugh because you're amazed. The concrete beneath the chunk you tore out has been reduced to gravel, and you can see a series of vines patiently taking pieces of concrete down and shoving leaf-fulls of dirt up.

"You must have been at this for days," you say.

G.

"Well. I guess so." You put the shovel back in the utility closet and retrieve the fruit from its "vase." You place it in the soil/gravel and lightly bury it.

As you pat the earth over the strange plant, a pink tube-like vine reaches up and rests upon your arm. When it roots into you like before, it hurts, but you find yourself not minding.

Y. E.

The vine retreats back into the soil and you look at the little cuts on your arm.

Too thin to scar.

Your phone rings. You pick up and hear your boss's labored breathing.

"You…" he coughs. "I'm sorry." There's unusual, liquidity background noise. "I'm sorry we're all doomed. This valley… It's all contaminated."

"Where are you?" you ask.

"I need you to know this isn't my fault. The mayor-" your boss is thrown into a fit that sounds as though he has no air. Then, after a splashing sound, the line cut out.

The mayor. The mayor's wife knew about The Mother, and she could talk far clearer than the plants.

You get up and throw on a coat. It gets cold with the cloud of spores blocking the sun.

You head out and up to the overlook.

The mayor's house's front door is not only open, but a little misaligned. When you get closer, you notice it has been kicked in.

"Hello?" You call inside.

No response.

"Miss Roswell?" You step into their oddly empty home and look around. No one in the kitchen. No one in the common area.

You head upstairs and you can hear movement. Excited, you go to the master bedroom, but you don't see a Roswell.

It's Erwin, rustling through their filing cabinet.

Erwin looked up at you and jumps. His eyes are wide and his thin body shaking. "I didn't break in!" he claims. He looks down at himself for a moment. "Okay, I broke in, technically, but I didn't kick in the door! I came to demand answers from Roswell- not that he ever answers- and his door seemed damaged. I got worried so I let myself in but the door was mis-centered so I couldn't close it, and- just look at this." Erwin runs up to you and shows you a paper he has stolen.

You pick it up. It appears to be a map, but almost all of it is blacked out.

"I recognize those front doors. It's that science lab in the crater." Erwin's eyes are intensely focused despite his body trying to vibrate to another plane of existence in excitement of a mystery. "I could never get close! It has that big fence, and tight security, and I don't know why the mayor has a map of it laying around. I looked in his fireplace, too, tons of burned pieces of paper, but I can't read any of it." He looks you dead in the eyes and pokes your sternum. "He's doing something there, and I guarantee is has to do with those plants."

"He's prodding the mother," you remember. "Meredith said something about it."

"The what?"

"I got possessed by the plants and they told me they were the mother, it's a long story."

Erwin looks utterly defeated as he puts his hands on his head and sits on the floor surrounded by the papers he has torn out from the cabinet.

"I don't what The Mother is if it's any consolation."

"It's not."

"But it's there. I bet it's there. I bet that's where the Roswells are.

Erwin slides his hands over his face. His voice, though muffled, comes through. "You can't get anywhere near it."

Right. The fence and security.

"I'm going to talk to Jess." Erwin stands up and looks around. "She's been acting strange, lately. Said the plants made her really sick. All the military has been infected it seems." Erwin shoots a look at you. Measuring his trust.

You nod. "I've got it, too."

"I think you should go home and rest. This air can't be good for anyone." Erwin looks out the window at the purple haze in the sky.

When you look at the haze, you know you should be scared by it, but you feel called by it. It feels like a distress signal, and it originates from the crater.

"She needs help," you whisper to yourself.

"Meredith, yeah," Erwin agrees. "I bet that's where she is. Trying to stop all of this, that is, if she can get in."

You don't correct him. He'd think you crazy. Ha. That's an image. Erwin, who is currently wearing a tin hat, thinking you crazy.

You walk out from the overlook and head back down to the valley. As you do, a sinking feeling in your chest nags you.

Something is going on at that lab. Something bad. You don't know what, or to whom at this point, but you know you need to be there.

So you turn down the path.

T, the voice rattles in your lungs. Y.

You stop in the road and stare ahead. The more you stare at the swirling cloud of spores, the lonely you feel. Hurt. Homesick, even.

E.

That convinces you. You turn around and head home.

You take a stop in your bathroom to check on your little plant. It's already a bud peaking out from the single broken tile. It has a weak glow.

Somehow, you know it needs water. Lots of it. Perhaps that's why it wanted to grow in the bathroom.

You grab a tea pitcher from the kitchen, fill it up, and return. Instead of pouring it on the soil like a normal person, you begin to pour it on the very top, and surely enough, the pedals loosen enough to accept it.

"You're not from the desert, are you?" you ask it. "I bet everything about the resources here is bad for you."

Y

"Not with me, I hope."

T

"What's hurting you?"

D

You realize you won't be getting direct answers. Whatever this plant is, it has trouble communicating with you.

You finish pouring the water and look at the bulb a little longer. Its glow is stronger.

D

You sit on the edge of your bathtub and give it some thought. You know you should be and you know you at least were, but mostly, you supposed you were confused. Here you are, watering a plant that is actively taking over the town. And here you are talking to it. All you can find inside you now is sadness. For what, you don't know. You don't think its your tears building behind your eyes. You don't think its your heartache boiling rage in your chest. You're not scared. You're just tired.

T. S.

"I'll just take a nap. You're hurting. You should save your energy." You stand up and you head to your bedroom. Without even turning off your light, you collapse on top of the sheets and instantly fall asleep.

You wake stiff and unrested. You have no missed calls. You're still in your day clothes.

Feeling drenched in sweat, you grab some clean clothes and head to the bathroom.

The plant is huge. Larger than any outside. Perhaps the water supply and lack of the desert sun let it grow. Several filiments are sprouted out and there's a stem-like bit reached out with a bloom. No fruit. Just a bloom with serrated pedals facing the light it is only inches from.

You straddle between it and the shower and turn it on. As you wait for the water to warm, you realize you have a problem.

You don't want to get naked in front of the plant.

Not that it has eyes, but you're staring at it and it seems so alive.

Well, it's not like the plant's wearing any clothes.

Just as you hype yourself up enough to undress, the plant shutters to life and bends its long stem down towards and past your head. It latches its toothed bloom to the showerhead and sits perfectly still as it consumes all the water that comes out, leaving none for you.

So much for a shower.

Tired and lost-feeling, you just leave the bathroom and walk up the stairs and out to your yard. You stand and you stare at the darkened sky.

You begin to wonder about your boss. Your stomach sours as you realize he could be dead. By what, you don't know, but you can't think of anything else that would have stopped him from calling. Not that you like the guy. Not like you'll miss him. Just that death weighs heavy on you, and you begin to wonder what is going on, and what the scale of it is.

"Hey!"

You turn and see Erwin. He's alone and standing in a strangely defensive position. He has a jar of a clear liquid and he's shaking.

"Are you okay?" you ask him.

He doesn't answer. He stands there sweating with anticipation for a moment, then, overcome by some sort of duty, he lashes his arms forward and the liquid douses you. It tastes bitter and citrus-y, and you cough and stumble back, but when you regain your posture, you look up at the sky and you see a threat in that haze. You look at the strange plant in your yard and see something intruding. You breathe in and you feel that your lungs are your own.

The voice is gone.


End file.
